Choose Your Friends Wisely
by summerlinde
Summary: AU: Draco is sorted into Gryffindor. Everyone's shocked at first, but eventually it's just a fact. Draco is in Gryffindor. Somewhere along the line, he becomes A Gryffindor. But what happens when his parents' lives start to bleed into his? How will he deal with an ultimatum from Voldemort himself? 6th year.
1. Prologue - Choose Your Friends Wisely

Draco Malfoy's legs were shaking as he followed the other Gryffindors up the stairs toward their new common room. He couldn't believe it. This was so wrong! He'd known there would be trouble as soon as the hat said "Hmm," instead of saying "Slytherin," but if he'd had any idea how _much_ trouble it would be, he might have shouted "Slytherin" himself and hoped nobody noticed.

Instead, he'd tried to reason with the thing, telling it that everyone in the Malfoy family had _always_ been in Slytherin and _obviously _it was where he belonged. It had kept hemming and hawing instead, though, and it had eventually ordered him to shut up and stop thinking so loudly about Slytherin so that it could really hear the truth.

And then he'd shut up, or at least tried to, which had been his second mistake, because a few minutes later, it had announced in his ear that Slytherin might be where his family had always sorted, but it wasn't the best option for him. And then it had shouted "Gryffindor" to the whole room without telling Draco first and it had been too late to do anything about how terribly, horribly, drastically wrong this was.

He'd had to go to the Gryffindor table and sit with them instead of with the friends he'd grown up with, and everyone had been talking about him at all the tables, he was pretty sure, and it had been a completely horrendous ordeal. And he'd been so looking forward to the feast and everything! But of course, being sorted into Gryffindor had ruined it. Just like it was going to ruin everything else.

He'd been followed into Gryffindor by Harry Potter, which wasn't so bad, and then by Dean Thomas (a muggle-born, he'd said at the table later! Draco was about to be rooming with a _muggle-born_!) and Ronald Weasley, both of whom he hated already. And then it had become clear at the table that Harry was already friends with Ron, talking to his older brothers like they'd known each other forever. Not that Harry hadn't been clear enough on the train when he picked Ron and Hermione over Draco, but still. He'd been hoping that now that they were in the same house through some fluke, Harry might reconsider.

Now, as he trailed behind the others, watching them, he thought about his situation. Harry didn't seem to want anything to do with him, Weasley was a filthy blood traitor and Draco would never be able to live down a friendship with him, Dean and the other unfamiliar boy, Seamus Finnigan, seemed to be hitting it off (in part because Seamus was halfblood, and therefore not someone Draco much wanted to associate with, either), and the only one left was Neville Longbottom. Whose parents had been tortured to insanity by Draco's aunt and uncle. Which Draco suspected might be a bit of a problem.

Neville's parents had been part of the opposition to the Dark Lord during the war when they were all babies, but now they were gone and it was just him and his grandmother. Draco was sure Neville's grandmother had said bad things about the Death Eaters and about his own family, but it would probably still be easier to make Neville see sense about the whole thing than it would to get Ron Weasley, with all those brothers around all the time, to come over to his way of thinking. And anyway, the war notwithstanding, the Longbottom family was more prestigious than the Weasleys, if only a little.

Neville got his foot stuck in a disappearing step the prefect – Percy Weasley, who made Malfoy feel sick with the way he took charge like he deserved the power – had told them to hop over, and Draco was there helping him faster than anyone else, because he'd made his decision. Neville was the best he could hope for as a friend, because he'd seen the way Crabbe and Goyle had looked at him from the Slytherin table as he walked over to sit with the Gryffindors.

For a moment, they'd sat there shell-shocked, mouths gaping open like they were trying to catch flies, which was about all he would have expected, really. Crabbe and Goyle were a special kind of idiot, and he'd known _that_ much for years. As the people around them began to talk, he'd seen their faces go from dumbstruck to sinister, the brutal cruelness they usually turned on people like the Weasleys aimed at him instead. Draco tried to tell himself that he was better off with a chance at real friends than he was with a couple of idiots like that toadying to him, but having toadies still sounded like more fun than _this. _Neville looked surprised, but he accepted the help. "Thanks! I slipped!"

Draco had to fight not to say something sarcastic in reply. "It's ok. Accidents happen, right?" _Like the one that put me in __Gryffindor_, his brain continued, but he stopped the words from coming out of his mouth because he didn't think they were wise right now. Neville smiled at him, as if relieved that someone was being nice to him. He probably _was_ relieved.

Neville had been talking at the table about how his family had thought he might be a squib, and he seemed sort of awkward and a little pathetic. He might be smarter than Crabbe and Goyle (it would be hard not to be) but he had none of the confidence or purpose they had to make up for it. Draco felt sort of bad for him, really. But it was also going to be useful, he supposed. He could probably get Neville to like him if he was nice enough. And he could do nice. Couldn't he? And maybe there was more to Neville than met the eye. Maybe.

* * *

By age 14, Draco Malfoy was a very different person than when he'd started school, and he almost hadn't noticed it happening. He and Ron were probably never going to get along, of course, and any hope he'd had of getting along with Harry Potter had gone away the moment they became teammates second year. Draco had tried out for seeker and failed to take the position, but he was still the Quidditch team's hero as their best chaser, even if he wasn't _much_ better than Angelina and Katie, and his dad's gift of brand new Nimbus 2001 brooms for the team had rubbed Harry the wrong way, even though it was meant to make them all like him.

Harry had even refused his broomstick, sticking with the Nimbus 2000 that everyone knew McGonagall had bought for him herself. The worst part was, he'd done it politely, going on about sentimental value and supersition and it being his first ever broom, so Lucius hadn't picked up on how awful Harry could be. But even if Ron and Harry were basically a wash, he'd gotten to be almost shockingly close to Neville, finding a lot in common in unexpected places even though they were quite different on the surface and bonding over the fact that both of them felt like outsiders in Gryffindor, like they might not belong.

He'd even gotten to like Dean and Seamus, though they were sometimes a little rowdy for his tastes. He wasn't really one for following muggle sports or kicking rolled socks around the dorm room or trying to throw wadded tissues neatly into Neville's trunk from across the room. But they were decent enough, and they'd stuck by both him and Harry when the whole Chamber of Secrets mess had happened and they'd been the school's two top suspects, Harry because he was a parseltongue and Draco because everyone knew he'd _wanted_ to be a Slytherin and figured he might be trying to prove he ought to be. He owed them, a little, for their faith in him, and he did _like _them, now that he was used to the idea of being friends with them.

As far as the girls in his house went, Lavender and Parvati were a perpetual irritation, shallow and silly and giggly, and sometimes it was hard not to manipulate them just because he could. They weren't bad people, though, and if they didn't trust him it was less due to his parentage then it was to the fact that he couldn't resist tricking them now and again.

Particularly memorable was the time he'd convinced them that tying a chain of puffapod flowers around their necks would keep away the bees they were both so desperately afraid of. He'd said it was a trick his grandmother had told him, and since they always believed him when he told them about "old wizarding family secrets," they'd done it, at least until Padma, who was a Ravenclaw and considerably less gullible than her sister, had informed them that it wouldn't do anything but dye the skin around their necks red so that they looked like they'd been strangled.

Even Harry and Ron had seemed to appreciate _that _one, though they'd pretended not to on principle, because they still refused to like Draco. Hermione, who Draco thought he might get along rather well with, these days, if she weren't so close with Harry and Ron, hadn't even bothered to hide her glee. Lavender and Parvati had been on a particularly intense Divination kick at the time and they'd been driving her crazy trying to read tea leaves in their dorm room.

He and Hermione had been fighting for years to see who could get the best marks, and usually it was Hermione, though he _did _beat her on the occasional test or essay, just often enough to make the fight worth fighting. Both of them drove the Ravenclaws batty, because they usually took the top two slots in everything, and they weren't even in the house meant for scholars.

Usually, they stuck together a bit, in the face of Ravenclaw irritation, though there had been a particularly horrible month-and-a-half of no one talking to him when he called her a "mudblood" their second year, infuriated that she'd beaten him so badly on a practical for their potions class, which was usually his best subject. It had been the worst few weeks of his life, completely cut out of society, and it was only when Hermione had deigned to forgive him after what felt like his millionth apology that they'd let him back in again. Now, that was well in the past, though he could still see in her eyes sometimes that she hadn't forgotten.

They were as close to friends as they could be, given that she was so close to the "wonder twins," who were the closest things to enemies he'd ever had. At least, they were the closest if you didn't count the Slytherins who took occasional shots at him for the sake of a little glory in their own house, and he didn't count them, because the Slytherins were scattered and tended to trade off, rather than being the same people over and over.

The thing was, he'd never _thought_ of any of them as his _friends_. Not until today. They were just . . . housemates. They were the people he lived with, had class with, ate lunch with. They populated his life, and he'd realized several times that he got along with them better than he ever would have thought he would. But today? Today, he had to face the truth. They were more than just people he hung out with. They were his friends. And, even more surprisingly, he was _their _friend.

It was a strange feeling, now that he was sitting outside under one of the trees near the lake, beside Neville and surrounded by the rest of their house and, inexplicably, Padma Patil, who he was seriously considering asking to the Yule Ball his father said would be coming in December. Everyone was trying to comfort Neville and reassure Draco and it felt, for the first time, like he was really part of it all, _completely_ part of it all, with his whole heart. He felt warm inside surrounded by these people, something he'd certainly never have expected when he first started school with them.

He still felt a little shell-shocked, both by what had happened in DADA earlier and by the fact that Neville was still sitting beside him, not mad at him at all. He hadn't been able to stop himself as the spider writhed on the desk under Professor Moody's wand and Neville grew whiter and whiter and whiter in the seat beside him. He'd found himself on his feet, shouting at a professor for the first time in his life. He could still hear his own voice echoing through the room, saying something he had no right to say.

"What's _wrong_ with you?" he'd demanded, dropping all the usual honorifics in his anger, "Can't you see you're upsetting Neville? How _dare_ you do _that_ spell in here when you _know_ what happened to the Longbottoms! You were the auror who _caught_ my aunt torturing them, and now he's got no parents and you're _doing the spell in front of him_? Are you some kind of an _idiot_? Or are you just as sadistic as Aunt Bellatrix?" And then he'd realized what he'd said. He'd told Neville's parents' story, and it wasn't his to tell, because Neville never, ever mentioned that his parents were stuck in St. Mungo's, completely insane.

The silence in the classroom had been deafening, drowned out only by the loud sound of his heart beating in his ears, and he'd suddenly felt completely drained, the hot anger freezing into icy fear that ran up and down his spine as he turned to Neville. "Oh no! Neville, I . . . I didn't mean to . . ."

And Neville Longbottom, because he was his best friend, had stood up, too, and looked him in the eye, and straightened his spine, and said "It's ok, Draco. I . . . I was going to have to tell them eventually. I just . . . didn't think anyone knew." Draco had blushed so hard that his pale skin turned nearly purple as the rest of the classroom exploded into noise around them and the Gryffindors, in mass, moved to surround Neville, glaring at the professor at the front.

Moody, apparently aware that he'd gone too far, dismissed class early and they'd all come out here together with Draco and Neville in the middle of the pack, side by side, even though they were usually on the edges of everything. He hadn't even been able to talk to Neville over the rush of words from the others, telling Neville they were sorry about his parents and congratulating Draco for having taken such a spectacular stand and asking for details neither of the boys wanted to give, but it had been ok that he couldn't get a word in, because he'd had no idea what to say.

They'd picked up Padma somewhere along the way, her twin explaining the situation in a hushed whisper that still carried, and he'd felt bad again, hearing it laid out like that. "Draco's aunt tortured Neville's parents until they went crazy and then Moody caught her and sent her to Azkaban, but he showed us the spell she used in class and then Draco yelled at him 'cause obviously Neville's really upset." Draco's aunt. Could Padma see past that?

Neville had told him it was alright, but now that it was a little quieter, now that everyone was a little more settled in their clump under the tree, Draco realized he had to know for sure. He had to double check, because while at the beginning, he'd chosen to befriend Neville for completely selfish reasons, like status and power and a desire to have someone around who was easy to control, Neville had somehow turned into a real friend, and the thought of losing him over something like this was hard to bear. "Nev', is it . . . is it really ok? I . . . I mean, I only know because that's how my mom's sister wound up in Azkaban and I know you don't like to talk about it . . ."

Neville cut him off. "It's really ok, Draco. I mean it. 'Cause, you know, you're not your aunt. It's . . . I thought about that when we started, how you were related to all those Death Eaters who hurt my parents, but then I figured, you're in Gryffindor, right, and they were in Slytherin, so you're not them. And, I mean, I'm not brave or anything like my family, or good at magic, so why would you have to be just like _your_ parents? You could be different too. And you _are_! You're . . . you're my best friend. And . . . and I think if your family doesn't like you the way you are, or if they don't like you siding with me instead of your aunt, you'd better come live with me and Gran. We'll look after you."

For the first time since they started together at Hogwarts, Draco found himself admiring Neville Longbottom. He'd been jealous, on occasion, of Neville's natural affinity for plants and high marks in Herbology, and he'd been jealous of the way everyone seemed to like him (or everyone that counted anyway) and he'd thought it would be nice to be able to stay that cheerful and positive. But he'd never seen Neville this way, back straight, voice confident between the stops and starts, speaking from the heart and making everyone else follow along.

Neville had a weird kind of power around him, as the other Gryffindors echoed the sentiment, murmuring that of course Draco wasn't like his aunt and of course he shouldn't worry and of course they'd look after him too, and Draco was suddenly very aware that he'd stumbled into one of the best choices he might ever make when he decided to help poor little bumbling Longbottom on the stairs that first night. Grinning back at Neville, he answered, "If it ever comes to it, I'll take you up on that." And, one day, he would.


	2. Chapter 1 - Secrets

**Ok! I've done some rewriting/restructuring because I didn't like the chapter I originally wrote for this material. Hopefully this one is better, but even if it's not, I think it sets the stage better for what I have planned. . .**

* * *

The beginning of the school year was always odd for Draco. It was jarring, trading the huge, silent bedroom at his parents' cold house for the noisy and crowded warmth of the Gryffindor boys' dormitory, and it was always odd sitting at the table with his friends again with the full knowledge that people like Dean and Hermione would never have a place around his family's too-large-for-three dinner table, even if he'd been brave enough to ask them to come for a visit. His parents had, at least for a while, tried to smooth his way in Gryffindor - they didn't want him to be miserable - but they'd never actually approved, and switching between the two was always a strange feeling.

This year was even stranger, as he left Neville's house for school and was immediately surrounded by a crowd of people at Platform 9 3/4 who thought they were both heroes. And Neville _was_. Neville deserved the attention, as awkward as it seemed to make him feel and as much as he seemed to think it was misplaced. But Draco wasn't a hero, not even after fighting in the battle at the Ministry at the end of last year. There were so many things the others didn't know. Secrets he'd only told Neville. Secrets he'd told to no one at all. He didn't deserve their admiration, and he couldn't even tell them why.

It was hard to pay attention to anything they were saying in the prefect's meeting when all he really wanted to do was escape back to whatever compartment Neville was in on the train. Or maybe to escape back to Neville's house, off the train entirely. That was a funny thought, wanting to go back to Neville's house.

He'd hated being there. He'd hated the way Neville's Gran looked at him with a perpetual air of suspicion, the way the springs in the ancient camp bed dug into his back when he slept, and the way Neville's small room seemed even smaller with both of them living there. He'd hated the way visitors who came to see the Longbottoms were always surprised to find him there, and the way they always seemed to whisper about him amongst themselves as they left.

He'd hated a lot of things about living there, but none of them as much as he'd hated the way he couldn't shake the memories of how he'd ended up there. And those memories were still here, tormenting him. So maybe he didn't want to go back. Maybe there was no point in going back.

As the meeting ran on, a drone in his ears that he couldn't force himself to focus on no matter how hard he tried, Draco found himself spinning, again, through memories he couldn't quite shake. His parents had been keeping secrets from him for years, and he'd known it. The fact that he hadn't been expecting Umbridge had been proof enough, even without all the rest, without the way he'd been sent running with everyone else when the Death Eaters marched at the Quidditch World Cup until he had ended up going home with Seamus's family and floo powdering home from there, or the way they'd said nothing about Harry's claims that Voldemort was back or about Cedric's death, or about what they were doing on their almost nightly "date nights."

Umbridge had blindsided him as much as she had everyone else, and he'd found himself responding with the rest of the Gryffindors, first deciding to learn Defense with or without her and then deciding to defy her entirely when she said they couldn't. He'd joined Dumbledore's Army and he'd followed it through to the very end, to the fight at the Ministry, and he supposed that was why they thought he was a hero. Really, it was why he wasn't.

He'd only met Sirius once, and only because Hermione had said he should meet the only other Gryffindor in his family. He almost wondered sometimes, as he struggled to sleep at night with the memories growing more and more solid in the dark, why he'd even gone to rescue him. But then he knew. He'd gone because even though he barely knew Sirius, it was good to know he existed, and because Neville and Luna and Hermione were all going and he wanted to protect them. And he supposed he had. And he supposed it was worth it. They'd all made it back to school, after all, and none of them had injuries Madame Pomfrey couldn't fix, and there was no way to know, if he hadn't been there, how it would have gone.

It could have been much worse. Aunt Bellatrix had killed Sirius - maybe if she hadn't been so focused on making sure Draco knew she'd do the same to him if he didn't join the Death Eaters, she'd have killed someone else, too. Maybe the fact that she hadn't was enough to make up for the way her voice echoed shrilly through his nightmares, calling him a blood traitor and telling him she'd kill him herself, nephew or not, if he didn't "straighten up." It wasn't enough to make him a hero, but maybe it was enough to make having fought worth it.

His father's presence at the battle had been even more awkward, in some ways. Aunt Bellatrix had been immediately outwardly hostile, but his father had simply been shocked. And then he'd been disgusted. Lucius's face, falling into a look of loathing as he looked at Draco standing with the others, was one of the memories that wouldn't leave him alone. And then his father hadn't looked at him again for a long time. He'd attacked the others, but avoided his own son. It had made Draco feel small, like he didn't even exist, as his father looked past him.

It was good that Lucius had ignored him, and he tried to tell himself that, because the alternative was perhaps that his father would have attacked _him_, but the way his father had evaded him, staying always on the other side of the room, shooting curses at his friends and saying absolutely nothing to Draco at all, made him feel shaken inside. Was that how this was going to be? Did he just not exist for his parents anymore?

But then, there was that one other moment when they'd met each other's eyes. It was the worst part of all of it. The Order of the Phoenix had arrived, the battle had started to go south for the Death Eaters, and all of a sudden, he'd been face to face with his father in spite of Lucius's best efforts to the contrary. His father was running scared with the rest of them, because Dumbledore was here now, and for a moment, Draco had stood between Lucius and escape, wand still up from his previous duel.

Neither of them had said anything. Draco's heart had pounded in his chest once, twice, three times. Then he'd stepped aside and Lucius had been out the door in an instant, gone. And that was that. He'd escaped, with Aunt Bellatrix and the Dark Lord himself, and the rest of the Death Eaters had been captured, and now Draco had nightmares where he let his father go, and then nightmares where he didn't and Dad was in Azkaban, rotting away, and no matter how you sliced it, Draco was never going to be a hero.

He could save his dad or he could save his friends, but he couldn't do both. Not completely. And not forever.

The meeting let out and Draco hurried down the corridor of the train, not caring that he'd missed everything they said, because maybe if he could just get to where his friends were, his brain would leave him alone. It had worked over the summer. He'd been actually actively happy the few times Padma had managed to visit him (He and Neville had taken the Patil twins to the Yule Ball the year before last, and while Parvati and Neville had mostly been awkward the whole night and had been glad to put it behind them, Draco and Padma had been going steady ever since), and he'd been at least distracted when Luna and Seamus had come to see them.

And then, of course, there was Neville. There had been nights when Draco was sure he wouldn't have slept a wink without the familiar sound of Neville's steady breathing from across the room, constant and perpetual and just the same as it had been every night at school for the last five years.

When he found the compartment his friends were in, Draco was surprised to find Harry and Ron already there. He wasn't sure how to act around them, yet. Even after they'd let him into the DA, he'd known Ron and Harry still didn't like him, and he suspected he'd mostly been allowed in because Hermione said so. Now that they'd actually been in a real fight together, on the same side, things were different.

Things had started to change as the Gryffindors fought off the Inquisitorial Squad, all of them together, even though the I.S. members were the people Draco's parents had always intended him to be friends with - the people they'd always intended him to _be_. Things had _actually _changed when he slid his arm under Hermione's to help Neville carry her through the Ministry, leaving Harry free to take charge and to lead them.

He'd seen something in Harry's eyes, some kind of acknowledgement that he'd never seen before, and when they'd gotten back to school for the last few days of last year, that something had stayed. Not that they'd seen much of each other. Not that anything was really different. There hadn't been time for that. But he couldn't ignore it, either.

He pushed his way into the compartment, ignoring the fact that it was technically full, because Padma was in it - she had clearly been waiting for him, or she'd be sitting with the Ravenclaws instead of Neville, and if being with her meant squishing, he would squish. Harry, Ron, and Ginny stayed firmly put on their side of the compartment (not really surprising) but Padma, Neville, and Luna all scooted over to make room for him to squash in between Padma and Neville.

"Is Hermione coming, d'you think?" Harry asked awkwardly. Draco wasn't sure quite what to make of the question or of Harry talking to him at all. Usually, they got through their brief non-Quidditch interactions by each pretending that the other didn't exist. Was this residual _something _from last year, or was Harry just actually wondering about Hermione? Not that it mattered much, but he'd always gotten the feeling that Harry didn't trust him, and this year would be easier if Harry trusted him. His brain shied away from where that thought led. This year was not going to be easy no matter what happened. Saving his father was not his only secret.

He forced himself to answer the question. "Probably not. The prefects are technically supposed to sit up in the prefects' compartments, and you know how Hermione is about rules."

Harry looked uncomfortable. "Right. Forgot about that." Then he turned to Ron and Ginny and started talking about someone called "Phlegm," and Draco was almost relieved to be ignored. It was at least familiar. He settled in to talk to the other three, wrapping his arm around Padma as she rolled her eyes at Luna's latest crazy idea. Wrackspurts, which he usually wouldn't have given a second thought. But in the face of the real problems feeding on his mind, Luna's usual stream of fantasy and conspiracy was a welcome distraction.

Was it going to be like this all year? He hoped not. He hoped he was just nervous because it was a new school year and this one was going to be different. He hoped he would settle in, in spite of everything. In spite of having chosen to save his father when he knew his friends would never have done it. In spite of the fact that he was considering doing so again. He couldn't stay this on edge forever, could he? He was pretty sure he would go insane if he tried.

Once they reached the castle, the constant presence of everyone else helped to drive away his memories, though there were two quiet moments that scared him, as first Padma and then Hermione pulled him away and asked if everything was alright. Their questions were hard to evade, but he blustered through, pretending to be ok and eventually, Padma had to leave for her own table in the Great Hall and he managed to distract Hermione by getting her to summarize the entire prefect's meeting for him.

The rest of the night was fine. He could push through. He could get caught up in the hustle and bustle and catching up with Dean (whose muggle life usually didn't much interest him, frankly, but at least now it was something that didn't remind him of the things he was trying not to think about.) They ate and drank and laughed, and he tried not to think about the fact that he'd betrayed them, or maybe that he _was_ betraying them, even still.

He vanished to the toilets when Dumbledore gave his welcome speech. It was easier.

Once they'd all gone to bed, the distractions of dinner were gone. He had hoped that the comfort of Neville's breathing all summer would continue into the school year, maybe even magnified by the presence of the rest of the boys as well. It wasn't. The moment his head hit the pillow, the memories he'd been shoving away were back. And not the ones he'd let himself think about. The ones he'd been avoiding the most strongly. He was just too tired to fight it anymore.

Everyone else was asleep. Innocent. Unaware that there was a snake in their midst, almost literally. Unaware that he was lying here dwelling on the reasons he might be, maybe, willing to betray them again. He still didn't know. But when his mother's face came to mind, looking upset when he knew she _never_ let herself look upset, crying when he'd never seen her cry before, it was impossible not to at least consider what she'd told him, when she pulled herself back together again. The Dark Lord wanted him to kill Dumbledore. _Him_. It was ridiculous.

His mother had pulled herself together. She had become her usual harsh force-of-nature, bluff-until-someone-thinks-you're-in-control self and she'd explained that if Draco didn't kill Dumbledore, the Dark Lord was going to kill Lucius for his mistakes in the Department of Prophecy. It was a punishment. They both knew it. They _all_ knew it. And the worst part was that the Dark Lord won no matter what happened. If Draco did it, the Dark Lord got a new little Death Eater to do his bidding. He hated that thought.

If he didn't do it, the Dark Lord got to watch Lucius be destroyed by what, surely, the Death Eaters all saw as a failure in parenting. He'd heard that before, among his father's friends, ever since he'd sorted into Gryffindor, in sort of vague hushed voices like they didn't want them to hear. The Malfoys had failed to raise a properly pure-blooded son. Even when they didn't call him a blood traitor, they spoke of his "lack of conviction," or of his "softness."

He wasn't what he was supposed to be. And that was going to be his father's real punishment. Watching Draco fail him because Draco failed to be any of the things his parents had wanted. The Dark Lord was going to rub in the fact that he had never been the proper Slytherin son. He was going to convince Lucius that he was dying because Draco didn't love him. And Draco knew, somewhere inside, that he couldn't let that happen. Because he wasn't sure his father knew better.

The thought of his father dying was bad. The thought of his father dying with the belief that Draco didn't love him and had chosen to let him die was a thousand times worse. Draco rolled over and buried his face frustratedly in his pillow. He had no idea what to do, but he knew until he made a choice, he wasn't going to be able to think about anything else. And once he made a choice, he was going to have to live with its consequences. He wasn't sure which was worse.


End file.
